sooooooo, if anyone took notice of the clip from the new season that was part of the HBO promo during halftime of the college national championship game you'll see that there was actually a pretty big reveal. while everyone has been focused on the Dani-Sansa face to face the more important thing revealed in the scene was that Jorah is still alive and has made it to Winterfell. in case you forgot, the last we saw Jorah he was on the wall with Tormund when the Night King's new dragon blasted it apart so it wasn't clear whether had survived or not, and since we see now that he survived it is a reasonable assumption that Tormund survived as well.

Peven wrote:sooooooo, if anyone took notice of the clip from the new season that was part of the HBO promo during halftime of the college national championship game you'll see that there was actually a pretty big reveal. while everyone has been focused on the Dani-Sansa face to face the more important thing revealed in the scene was that Jorah is still alive and has made it to Winterfell. in case you forgot, the last we saw Jorah he was on the wall with Tormund when the Night King's new dragon blasted it apart so it wasn't clear whether had survived or not, and since we see now that he survived it is a reasonable assumption that Tormund survived as well.

Nope, that was Beric Dondarrion up on the wall with Tormond. Jorah left with his Queen.

Peven wrote:sooooooo, if anyone took notice of the clip from the new season that was part of the HBO promo during halftime of the college national championship game you'll see that there was actually a pretty big reveal. while everyone has been focused on the Dani-Sansa face to face the more important thing revealed in the scene was that Jorah is still alive and has made it to Winterfell. in case you forgot, the last we saw Jorah he was on the wall with Tormund when the Night King's new dragon blasted it apart so it wasn't clear whether had survived or not, and since we see now that he survived it is a reasonable assumption that Tormund survived as well.

Nope, that was Beric Dondarrion up on the wall with Tormond. Jorah left with his Queen.

yeah, he was in Kings Landing for Dany's meetup with Cersei. easy enough mistake to make, since these characters look alot alike, and considering how rushed everything was last season, with characters just travelling from the Wall to King's Landing and back in a single episode. one moment Jorah's up with Jon Snow capturing a white walker, the next he's down in Kings Landing dumping that same white walker at Cersei's feet.

Peven wrote:sooooooo, if anyone took notice of the clip from the new season that was part of the HBO promo during halftime of the college national championship game you'll see that there was actually a pretty big reveal. while everyone has been focused on the Dani-Sansa face to face the more important thing revealed in the scene was that Jorah is still alive and has made it to Winterfell. in case you forgot, the last we saw Jorah he was on the wall with Tormund when the Night King's new dragon blasted it apart so it wasn't clear whether had survived or not, and since we see now that he survived it is a reasonable assumption that Tormund survived as well.

Nope, that was Beric Dondarrion up on the wall with Tormond. Jorah left with his Queen.

that teaser has got to be the cheesiest thing this show has ever produced.

That was my first thought too... like fan-fic level. Message boards are alive with the talk about the statues.... Jon Targaryan's statue seems to show an OLDER Jon. Foreshadowing that he is the only Stark survivor?

Some people think that the single feather in the beginning represents Bran as the 3-Eyed Raven.Others think that the cold mist represents Bran as he will turn into the Night King.Me? I just think it was a cheesy-as-hell production and don't want to see anything else until April 14.

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Fievel wrote:Some people think that the single feather in the beginning represents Bran as the 3-Eyed Raven.

Maybe. But Season 1 Episode 1, King Robert puts a feather in the hands of the statue of Lyanna and says something about how she always loved when he brought her exotic birds or some shit like that. So that feather has been down there since that day, not disturbed until this Soap Opera Promo happened????

i think it is a mistake to attempt any deciphering of hidden clues that aren't there. I can only imagine the fun they had making this teaser, chortling and giggling to themselves as they were packing in as many false leads as possible to send fans chasing their tails.

Peven wrote:i think it is a mistake to attempt any deciphering of hidden clues that aren't there. I can only imagine the fun they had making this teaser, chortling and giggling to themselves as they were packing in as many false leads as possible to send fans chasing their tails.

i dunno.... i'm pretty sure there's a clue there to the next book's release date, if we only keep looking.

Peven wrote:i think it is a mistake to attempt any deciphering of hidden clues that aren't there. I can only imagine the fun they had making this teaser, chortling and giggling to themselves as they were packing in as many false leads as possible to send fans chasing their tails.

Well that's the whole point of this teaser. To titillate the fans, keep them engaged and thinking while in show-hiatus.

Peven wrote:i think it is a mistake to attempt any deciphering of hidden clues that aren't there. I can only imagine the fun they had making this teaser, chortling and giggling to themselves as they were packing in as many false leads as possible to send fans chasing their tails.

Well that's the whole point of this teaser. To titillate the fans, keep them engaged and thinking while in show-hiatus.

except that any thinking fan won't waste any time or energy wondering what it all means. teasers like this remind me that the general public are completely simple-minded and gullible

Early in the trailer is a shot of Euron's ships, ferrying the Golden Company from across the sea to fight Cersei's battle against Jon/Dany.In the books, the Golden Company is run by Jon Connington and the supposed son or Rhagar Targaryan. Obviously they aren't going to introduce another Targ at this point, but I'm thinking that what happens is the Golden Company lands, and immediately declares for House Targ, to be revealed that their captain is Jon Connington, right hand man and best fried of Rhagar.

Early in the trailer is a shot of Euron's ships, ferrying the Golden Company from across the sea to fight Cersei's battle against Jon/Dany.In the books, the Golden Company is run by Jon Connington and the supposed son or Rhagar Targaryan. Obviouszzzzzzzzzzzzzz

zzzzzzzzzz whatever, this is a boring trailer that shows nothing and I may as well not have seen it roll on boring people like you who overanalyse things WRONGLY into just a dull simple shot. IT'S JUST SHIPS!!!!! Get over it! It means nothing! God you're such a pleb!

Early in the trailer is a shot of Euron's ships, ferrying the Golden Company from across the sea to fight Cersei's battle against Jon/Dany.In the books, the Golden Company is run by Jon Connington and the supposed son or Rhagar Targaryan. Obviously they aren't going to introduce another Targ at this point, but I'm thinking that what happens is the Golden Company lands, and immediately declares for House Targ, to be revealed that their captain is Jon Connington, right hand man and best fried of Rhagar.

nice idea, but i think Jon Connington suddenly showing up in this series is about as likely as finding out the Night King is married to Lady Stoneheart and that they're actually coming to fight for the North against Cersei.

Early in the trailer is a shot of Euron's ships, ferrying the Golden Company from across the sea to fight Cersei's battle against Jon/Dany.In the books, the Golden Company is run by Jon Connington and the supposed son or Rhagar Targaryan. Obviously they aren't going to introduce another Targ at this point, but I'm thinking that what happens is the Golden Company lands, and immediately declares for House Targ, to be revealed that their captain is Jon Connington, right hand man and best fried of Rhagar.

nice idea, but i think Jon Connington suddenly showing up in this series is about as likely as finding out the Night King is married to Lady Stoneheart and that they're actually coming to fight for the North against Cersei.

I hear ya, but I don't think he'd be showing up as a meaningful character. Just as a small addition, someone who's there to say a few lines before become zombie fodder. Eh, its more of 'fan fic' in my head then a real idea.

I just can't imagine that Team Dany is really going to have to fight off the hordes of the dead THEN an army sent by Cersei. I know that's what it looks like is going to happen, but it doesn't feel right to me. I mean, the North has always been one of the least populated areas of the kingdom, will they all of a sudden have 100 thousand men at their backs in this fight? The north, the remains of the wildlings, the eyrie (again, not a huge army), and the Unsullied. Oh yea, and two dragons...

“We made a choice to just get on with it last season,” coexecutive producer Bryan Cogman said. “You can sit at home and do the math on how long it took to get the boats from Point A to Point B and whatever that was, yeah, that’s what it was. There’s always something everybody has got to graft on to and I guess that outrage was better than others, so I’ll take it.”

“We made a choice to just get on with it last season,” coexecutive producer Bryan Cogman said. “You can sit at home and do the math on how long it took to get the boats from Point A to Point B and whatever that was, yeah, that’s what it was. There’s always something everybody has got to graft on to and I guess that outrage was better than others, so I’ll take it.”

it's funny how GRRM took such great care to make this world as realistic and believable as possible, then hands it over to producers who are like, fuck it, we'll just pick people up and move them around like pieces on a chessboard.

Peven wrote:Yeah, the flying dragons were probably the most realistic and believable part of the world Martin created right after the white walkers and children of the forest........

for someone who claims to be such a sci-fi/comic book/fantasy etc geek, you'd think you'd be familiar with the way those authors use realism to make the fantastical elements of their stories believable. you can write about magic or FTL travel or dragons or radioactive spiderbites or zombies all you want, but if you don't stick to basic principles of physics (or at least offer a logical framework to explain the situations where those principles can be violated) then you lose all credibility. most importantly of all, you have to be consistent. once you establish a set of rules for your make-believe world, you can't just throw them out when it becomes inconvenient for your plot. that's just lazy writing, and it's a problem for ANY kind of storytelling. fantasy is no exception just because it has magic in it. and that's exactly what they did last season. they didn't offer "magical" explanations for how people were suddenly able to travel hundreds of miles in a single episode when previously it took a whole season to cover that distance, with just horses and sailboats. they just decided to ignore the problem and pretend the entirety of Westeros was roughly the size of manhattan.

GRRM went to great lengths to describe the distances and travel times between different parts of his world, and how it influenced events along the way, and for most of the time the series stuck to those rules. but once they decided they needed to wrap things up so quickly, all of the sudden boats can travel vast distances in a day or week that took months earlier in the series, armies that were constrained by reasonable travel times the first few seasons can move all over the map at a whim, and people can show up any place they need to be to move the story forward. sorry if the last seasons writers don't like getting called out for their lazy writing, but that's all it is. it doesn't matter now. everyone's been moved to where they need for the last 6 episodes, and hopefully there won't be any need for more warp speed character movements the rest of the way.

come on, like a lot of fantasy Martin cheats all the time with "magic" that hasn't been established yet in the story to further the plot. that is the freedom fantasy wroters have, they can make shit up as they go and write it off as "magic". pardon my adherence to the established meaning of words in the english language, if you had used "consistent with the rules he had established" instead of "realistic" or "believable" then what you said would have made more sense.

Regardless of GRRM's writing style, I don't think the SHOW really had much of a choice, and had to do these ridiculous time jumps. They simple don't have the luxury of time to make it more realistic.And that, unfortunately, is why I think the show has lost its appeal for me as the seasons go on. The most egregious example for me (like, made me scream at the TV) was last season's Dirty Dozen Zombie Hunt, where they stood on a rock for what seemed like maybe a day, before Dany came to the rescue. The amount of time it would have taken Gendry to run back to Castle Black, get a message to Dany in another fucking time zone from the Wall, and have her get there to rescue would have been weeks at best. But like I said, given the fact that they don't have unlimited time to produce the series, they really didn't have a choice (other than to write a different plot).

Still love this series, still have the rediculous desire to get this season going already, but yeah, I will ultimately come down as a "book over TV" guy.

there are always concessions made when translating from the page to the screen. they are different mediums and people who continually bitch and moan about the lack of "faithfulness" when a tv show or movie doesn't exactly depict the events and characters from books just don't fucking get it. it is why I choose not to read the books after I had already started watching the series, i wanted to enjoy it for what it was, a tv series telling a big story. for me it's strengths and weaknesses rest on how well it does that as a one hour long serial, not on how closely it resembles the books it is based on.

the books definitely have their problems too, and the over-reliance on characters coming back from the dead (which is even worse in the books) is definitely one of them. but while those instances come across as arbitrary and overly convenient at times, they don't violate any previously established rules of the world that's been created. the ridiculous location jumps that so many characters made last season do.

Peven wrote:come on, like a lot of fantasy Martin cheats all the time with "magic" that hasn't been established yet in the story to further the plot. that is the freedom fantasy wroters have, they can make shit up as they go and write it off as "magic". pardon my adherence to the established meaning of words in the english language, if you had used "consistent with the rules he had established" instead of "realistic" or "believable" then what you said would have made more sense.

I've never understood this argument. There's a difference between magical/surreal elements and lapses in logic, and it's not hard to tell which is which. Dragons and zombies and hobos or whatever are easily acceptable fantasy components; boats and horses that function like normal boats and horses suddenly being able to travel at warp speed with no given explanation? Not so much.

Peven wrote:come on, like a lot of fantasy Martin cheats all the time with "magic" that hasn't been established yet in the story to further the plot. that is the freedom fantasy wroters have, they can make shit up as they go and write it off as "magic". pardon my adherence to the established meaning of words in the english language, if you had used "consistent with the rules he had established" instead of "realistic" or "believable" then what you said would have made more sense.

I've never understood this argument. There's a difference between magical/surreal elements and lapses in logic, and it's not hard to tell which is which. Dragons and zombies and hobos or whatever are easily acceptable fantasy components; boats and horses that function like normal boats and horses suddenly being able to travel at warp speed with no given explanation? Not so much.

you are missing the point, though, it isn't just "magic" it is how it is used. when you read a story set in "reality" you know the "rules" of that reality. when you read a fantasy you find out the rules as you go, because the authors use it as they go in the story as an easy out plot device. in short, they're making it up as they go along. what about Dany only having the ability to survive fire that one time in the books? no real explanation of how or why, no set up, nothing consistent with the rules of that world except for, you know, magic. how did they travel so far in such a short amount of time? how about a magic worm hole? better? good

She was, but I think he ultimately was upset with himself for making her fireproof. No other Targaryns are/were fireproof. And we haven't seen her magical abilities after her rebirth from the Drogo fire (although we have seen in on the show, when she burns down the hall with all the Khals inside).

Peven wrote:come on, like a lot of fantasy Martin cheats all the time with "magic" that hasn't been established yet in the story to further the plot. that is the freedom fantasy wroters have, they can make shit up as they go and write it off as "magic". pardon my adherence to the established meaning of words in the english language, if you had used "consistent with the rules he had established" instead of "realistic" or "believable" then what you said would have made more sense.

I've never understood this argument. There's a difference between magical/surreal elements and lapses in logic, and it's not hard to tell which is which. Dragons and zombies and hobos or whatever are easily acceptable fantasy components; boats and horses that function like normal boats and horses suddenly being able to travel at warp speed with no given explanation? Not so much.

you are missing the point, though, it isn't just "magic" it is how it is used. when you read a story set in "reality" you know the "rules" of that reality. when you read a fantasy you find out the rules as you go, because the authors use it as they go in the story as an easy out plot device. in short, they're making it up as they go along. what about Dany only having the ability to survive fire that one time in the books? no real explanation of how or why, no set up, nothing consistent with the rules of that world except for, you know, magic. how did they travel so far in such a short amount of time? how about a magic worm hole? better? good

except they don't even try to explain those travel time issues. they don't offer any explanations involving "magic worm holes" or anything else. they just expect us, the audience, to pretend not to notice, and then complain when we do.

nothing too unexpected in the first episode. while watching back through the last season to get ready for last night my girlfriend and I were talking about how Sam learning that Dany had torched his brother was going to be a bump in the road. we were right. a good mechanism to push Sam to the big reveal. events at Kings Landing were amusing but nothing really substantial as of yet.

There will be tons of complaining today that "nothing happened". Which is more or less true, if you were just expected lots of deaths right off the bat. I liked it, but can't help but think that with only 5 episodes left, how they are going to tie everything up.

And what the hell, I thought we were getting super-sized episodes? I need more than 1 hour dammit!

I still stand by my prediction that the Golden Company will turn on Cersei at the last minute.

Bronn being hired as an assassin by Cerei is so fucking stupid. That's like asking Curly to murder Moe and Larry.

Sam telling Jon about his true lineage in anger was a bit out of character if you ask me. Not out of the question he'd react that way, just seemed a little forced to me.

The 5 minute romantic interlude where Jon learns to fly a dragon.... come on, we ain't got time for that!

I would have liked to have seen a Lady Mormont/Jorah meeting as well.

I personally didn't like the change to the opening credits. They looked too CGI to me, it didn't the same feel. IMO.

The weapon that Arya asked Gendry to make looked like a javelin. That, my friends, is the dead-dragon killer right there.

so sorry wrote:Bronn being hired as an assassin by Cerei is so fucking stupid. That's like asking Curly to murder Moe and Larry.

Cersie's not that dumb (i think). Bronn will find them, but the Mountain will be lurking somewhere behind him to do the deed.then again, the Lannister's have been getting dumber and dumberer each season. between Tyrion believing Cersei's promise to help in the fight, to Jaime just showing up in Winterfell by himself apparently not realizing everyone there can't wait to kill him, it seems like brains in this family all left with Tywin.

so sorry wrote:The 5 minute romantic interlude where Jon learns to fly a dragon.... come on, we ain't got time for that!

how does Dany not realize the significance of Jon's dragon whisperer skillz.

i think there's something to the dragons resembling the people they were named after, but i dont see them being literal reincarnations of those people. more like they are symbolic reincarnations, they may embody some of the characteristics of those people but saying they actually ARE those people reincarnated as dragons, seems silly. and even if targaryens could be reincarnated as dragons, it's hard to see how a Dothraki like Khal Drogo would end up being reincarnated as a dragon, just cause he was briefly married to one... he'd be reincarnated as a stallion or something.

i think there's something to the dragons resembling the people they were named after, but i dont see them being literal reincarnations of those people. more like they are symbolic reincarnations, they may embody some of the characteristics of those people but saying they actually ARE those people reincarnated as dragons, seems silly. and even if targaryens could be reincarnated as dragons, it's hard to see how a Dothraki like Khal Drogo would end up being reincarnated as a dragon, just cause he was briefly married to one... he'd be reincarnated as a stallion or something.

Wow that's ridiculous! You could stretch the theory and say that since Drogo's body was cremated at the same time the dragon eggs were hatched, maybe some spiritual voodoo into the eggs may have occured. But this is some silly shit.

here's another crazy theory... supposedly only a Targaryen can ride a dragon. so, at the end of season 7 the Night King was riding the zombie dragon when he blew down the Wall. so does that mean the Night King was once a Targaryen?

oh yeah... speaking of silly shit...

WHERE THE FUCK IS GHOST???

i get that Jon had to leave him behind in Winterfell to go see Dany last season. and i even can kinda accept that they headed straight to Eastwatch to capture a white walker and didn't stop to pick him up on the way, even though a dire wolf sure would have come in handy up there.

but now Jon has returned to Winterfell. he's had time to reunite with his family, and go down to the crypt to hang out with his dead "daddy". he's even had time to go on a dragon joyride and then have waterfall sex with Dany (you know they did it in there, sex in caves and waterfalls and stuff is kinda jon's thing). but no time to spare to say hi to the wolf that he raised from a pup, the wolf who has saved his life? ok, i probably would've chosen waterfall sex with Dany too... but there were plenty other opportunities for him to go see his beloved wolf.

i imagine an alternate version of the dragonriding scene, where jon is riding rhaegal all over winterfell, and we pan down to see Ghost in his cage, looking up at him with wet eyes, knowing he's been replaced and forgotten. then Ghost breaks out, runs south and finally meets up with Nymeria, and they spend the rest of the episode commiserating over the Stark children who have abandoned them. Nymeria says, "but doesn't he realize you are the reincarnation of his mother, Lyanna Stark, and that you and you alone know the key to defeating the Night King and saving the realms of men from destruction by the army of the dead?" and Ghost replies "Jon Snow? he knows nothing! and worse..." a pause. a tear. "he FEELS nothing."

The removal of Ghost is really terrible, but its been said before, they didn't have the budget/time to always include a fake giant wolf in all these scenes. The on-screen adaptations of the direwolves was mostly just symbolic I guess. Book wise, they definetly play a bigger role, at least in the sense that the Stark's all have varying levels of Warging into them. I'm sure in the book version, Jon dies, but his spirit is living in Ghost right now, and will jump back into his own body when the time comes.Show wise, those poor doggies just got left behind...

That said, Ghost has to appear when the Big Battle occurs. Even if its just to show up, ripe a few throats out, then get gobbled up himself. There needs to be some kind of closure with him.

I think I remember seeing an interview with one of the producers where they said we were going to see more Ghost this year than we had in the past couple seasons. if that is the case I would think that next week's episode would be a good spot to start since it appears that it is going to be one big build-up to a major mid-season battle in episode 3, where I am expecting a devastating loss, akin to the ending of Infinity War, that sets up a 3 act, 1 act per episode, final run of the story. the battle I expect we'll see in episode 3 or the finale in episode 6 would be where I expect him to die if that is his fate.